Assignment 6 - YouTube Video Mixer

The title of my piece is "63" :: Cacophony" (read Sixty-Three Inch Cacophony).  I shot all the videos myself, with a Nikon Coolpix 5570 Point-and-Shoot camera.  I edited the raw video with Final Cut Pro and YouTube's editing software.

For my piece, I wanted to examine the aesthetic possibilities of music, as well as push it to and past the line that divides it from simple noise.  I filmed nine seven-inch records on my turntable; four 45 rpm discs, and five 33 and 1/2 rpm discs.  I played them either faster or slower than the correct speed, and while they are still recognizable as music, the distortion allows them to be considered completely apart from the musicians' original intentions.  By adding and subtracting layers of these semi-abstracted works, one can observe how quickly the mind can reject sound that is only slightly removed from its original form. 

I selected the records from my collection based mostly on color, although I took care to mostly leave out any widely-recognizable artists or songs.

63" :: Cacophony

Reading 3 - Manovich

Question 1: Even if digital images are compromised with regard to quality, is that fact relevant when we do not generally perceive any loss of clarity or information when the images are copied?

Question 2: How important is the shift from larger, more expensive and specialized machines to cheaper, all-purpose machines in the creation of new media pieces?  Is it on par with the impact that the creation of video cameras had on video art, or is it more or less profound?

Assignment 5 - Video Reenactment

For my project, I chose to reenact Raymonde Carasco's video piece "Gradiva Sketch 1".  The piece explores Wilhelm Jensen's novel "Gradiva", which is based on a bas relief from Pompeii, and Sigmund Freud's famous analysis of the novel and its author's mental state.  The piece compartmentalizes the beauty of the woman, focusing solely on her feet as she walks through the city.  I feel that the musical score ads a sense of liveliness to the piece, which features long stretches of static imagery that is punctuated in quick bursts.

The reenactment was filmed on a patch of landscaping to the north of the Church Fine Arts Building.  The feet are those of my friend Rose Chascsa.  I chose to reenact a part of the piece from about a minute in, because that is when the ethereal nature of the piece is first suggested by the entrance of the accompanying music.